


Clean

by fuckinghawthorne



Category: Twilight Series - All Media Types, Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: AU where wlw get the respect they deserve, Action/Adventure, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Slow Burn, Supernatural Elements, pretty much the entire series rewritten to my standards
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-10-14 23:56:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17518277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuckinghawthorne/pseuds/fuckinghawthorne
Summary: When Bella Swan moved back to the town she left as a baby, she expected to find rain, small-town gossips, and a whole lot of nothing else. Instead, she found herself walking the line between the natural and the supernatural; the life she's always known, and another far beyond her wildest dreams. At the center of it all was Rosalie Hale. Was she the cause of Bella's new life? Or was Bella the cause of hers?





	1. Goodbyes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Hey guys. To start, I don't own any of these characters. All of them belong to Stephanie Meyer. I'm not stealing them- I'm just treating them better than she did. Before you read, please be aware that this fic will include: mentions of rape, violence/death scenes, swearing, frequent alcohol and drug use/mentions, and a lot of sexual scenes. The sexual scenes won't ever be explicit, but they'll be there. If you're fine with all that, please keep reading! And come say hi on tumblr. The url is: iloveduinsecret.

Renee drove me to the airport in silence. The weight of my decision to return to Forks hung over us like a dark cloud, choking me in the backseat of my mother’s old Ford. Up front, she muttered something to Phil about the car in front of them, and then asked him which exit she should take to get off the highway. I sighed and tuned them out. No matter how many times she’d driven me to this airport, she always had to ask either Phil or me for which exit to take. My mother was smart, in her own way, but she was constantly unsure of herself. Once she married Phil and he became a part of her life with some sense of permanence, this quality of hers got even worse. I was certain that had Phil told her the wrong exit, she would have listened and taken it, despite her knowing exactly how to get there already. 

The morning sun peeked between the buildings to my right, promising another brilliantly sunny day. I leaned my head against the window and tried to absorb as much Vitamin D as I could. Forks, Washington was situated in the northwest corner of the Olympic Peninsula, and I knew there would be no warmth waiting for me there. I was transplanting myself from the valley of the sun into the cold, damp toe of America’s rain boot. It rained more often on that tiny town than anywhere else in the continental U.S., and I was sure that this would be the last sunshine I would see for awhile. I watched the buildings whiz past as Renee took Phil’s exit, and I said a silent goodbye to the city one last time. Phoenix had been my home for as long as I could remember. My mother had escaped with me from Forks when I was only a few months old, leaving Charlie, my father, behind us. I had never known anything else besides this blistering, sun-kissed city, and I wasn’t sure how my psyche would acclimate to the change that Forks would bring. 

Renee twisted around in the front seat once we made it to the airport’s parking garage. It was ten, and I still had two hours before my flight would take off. She looked at me the same way she always did- like her eyes were expecting something better to look at before they found me, and once they did, had to adjust accordingly. She frowned with a mouth that matched mine exactly, and closed her small blue eyes that I was lucky enough not to inherit. When she opened them again, they were wide and trusting. I caught a glimpse of a version of my mother that I hadn’t seen in a very long time. Here was the woman who had escaped Forks with her child 17 years ago in the hopes of giving her a better life. Here was the woman who used to put her foot down to Phil’s tantrums, who used to tuck me in at night and actually parent me, instead of relinquishing the reins of the household to the balding man sitting next to her. I swallowed hard and looked back at her, feeling anxious. I didn’t like it when Renee looked at me like this. It made me feel like she still existed somewhere inside of herself, and made me guilty for giving up on her the way I had to once she married Phil. 

“Do you want us to walk you to the gate?” she asked. I saw her eyes dart to Phil and back as she said this, asking silently for permission we both knew he wasn’t going to give. 

“No, I can find it myself,” I answered. I gave her a small smile, trying to reassure myself as much as her. The airport was huge, and it had been half a year since I last had to venture inside of it. I patted the front pocket of the carry-on backpack that was sitting in the seat next to me. “I have my ticket and ID ready to go in here,” I told her. “I don’t think I’ll have any trouble finding where I need to be.” 

An awkward silence enveloped the car, drawing us back under the heavy cloud that had loomed over us on the way here. I could see on my mother’s face that while she didn’t want me to go, she wasn’t sure what to do with me had I decided to stay. Deciding it was best to rip off the bandaid and get this whole experience over with, I slung the backpack over my shoulders and hopped out of the car. Phil and Renee followed my lead, trailing me to the trunk. 

Phil did me the basic courtesy of heaving my two suitcases out of the trunk, which saved me a lot of embarrassment. While I was sure I could wheel them safely to my terminal, I doubted I could have lifted them out of the car without smashing a toe or two. I was clumsy by nature, and anytime I was nervous, such as now, my condition worsened tenfold. He extended the handles for me and to my surprise, managed to put a look on his face that was not only appropriate, but somewhat believable. His feigned sadness at my departure would have looked natural on his face if only I hadn’t known the type of person he was under his baseball cap. When I took the handles of the suitcases from him, he was careful not to let our hands touch. He shoved them into the pockets of his jacket as soon as they were free, and looked down at me solemnly. 

“Well, we’re going to miss you,” he said. His voice was full of obligatory sadness that didn’t quite mask his impatience to get the hell out of the airport before midday traffic hit. He looked over at Renee, who was standing quietly next to him. “Let’s go, babe,” he said. Without a second glance at me, he turned on his heel and made his way back to the passenger seat. Renee watched him, and obediently shifted her feet so they pointed to her driver-side door. 

“You be good for your father once you’re up there,” she said, turning her head slightly to look at me. I met her eyes and saw that she had changed back into her usual self. Her eyes were no longer wide and trusting- they looked me up and down as though daring me to disobey this last command she could bestow on me while I was still her property. I nodded and let her reach out to squeeze my arm one last time. It wasn’t quite a hug, but it was more physical contact from her than I was used to receiving, and it made me uncomfortable to feel her hand cup my chin. She angled my face up to look at her, and locked our eyes together. “If he calls and says he can’t handle you, I’m not taking you back. There’s no room in Florida for you, you understand?” 

I swallowed and jerked my chin away from her grasp. I gave her a nod of assent and stared at the ground at her feet. The suitcases felt heavy where they tugged at my arms, and I pulled them closer to my body. “Yeah, I got it,” I mumbled. I took one last look at her, the car, and inside of it, Phil, busily syncing his phone to the car’s bluetooth. His gaudy death-metal could be heard starting up as I took my first steps away from my mother. “Bye, Mom,” I said. I looked up at her when I passed, following the flow of pedestrians to the elevators that would take me down to the airport’s main level. She crossed her arms and watched me go. There was a strange mixture of emotions on her face that I couldn’t recognize. 

“Bye, Bella,” was the last thing I heard my mother say before she slammed the car door shut behind her, officially ridding herself of the burden of a daughter she hadn’t wanted for quite some time now. 

The flight to Seattle was four hours long. From there it was another hour’s flight to the city of Port Angeles, which was an hour’s car-ride away from Forks and my new life as one of its residents. Flying didn’t bother me. I spent the time catching up on some reading and rearranging the furniture of my new (or was it old?) room in my head. What made my palms sweat and my head ache was imagining the drive down to Forks with Charlie. When I saw him waiting for me at the gate of my terminal, my heart skipped a beat and I tripped over one of my untied shoelaces. When I stumbled up to him he immediately cracked a smile. His crinkly brown eyes found their carbon copies on my face, and he looked into them triumphantly. 

“Bells!” he exclaimed, wrapping me in a one-armed hug. Time had obviously made neither Charlie or I less awkward. I hadn’t seen him since our annual summer trip to California last July, and the six months since then had taken a surprising toll on his face. He looked older, and slightly more wrinkled around the eyes. Though he was only thirty-eight, and by no means old, I couldn’t help but feel like I was hugging a much older man than the one I had left behind in LAX last summer. He released me and took both of my suitcases away despite my protests that I could handle them. I followed him as he started to lead me away from the throngs of people waiting to either board a flight, or see a loved one safely make their way off of one. “It’s so good to see you. I can’t believe you’re finally home,” he told me. 

The walk to the car was wet the second we stepped outside, but I was expecting that. I had already said my goodbyes to the few important things I was leaving behind in Phoenix, and that included the sun. Charlie led the way to his police cruiser and we sloshed towards it slowly, heads bent against the increasing torrent of wind and rain that slapped at our faces. I listened politely to him describe the drive up, and how he had kept my room “-exactly as you left it, Bella. You’re gonna feel like you never left.” 

I made an incomprehensible noise in the back of my throat at this last sentence of his. I watched him pop the trunk and tried in vain to help him lift the suitcases into the cruiser. The two suitcases and the backpack I was wearing contained the sum total of all of my worldly possessions, and it was sort of depressing to see how easily all three fit into Charlie’s wide trunk. I waited until we were safely strapped into the seats of his car before pulling back my hood and responding to him. “I- thanks, Dad,” I said, shaking out my damp hair. The scent of my cheap shampoo filled the interior of the car, mixing with its existing smells of Charlie’s cologne, wet carpet, and pine needles. “I’m excited to be home. I think it will be… better for me.” 

Charlie frowned as he backed out of his parking space. He didn’t speak again until we were on the road, winding through the streets of downtown Port Angeles. “Is it really that bad there, Bella?” he asked. He kept his eyes trained on the road in front of him. 

Neither of us were what anyone would consider talkative, and the pretense of mine and Charlie’s relationship had always been pretty solidly based around that fact. It made me uncomfortable to talk about anything serious with him, and I knew that this particular subject had a real chance of making me emotional, which I was sure neither of us wanted to see. Especially not within the first ten minutes of our first car ride home together. So I cleared my throat and followed his lead, and stared out of the windshield in front of me. 

“I was fine,” I said, although I heard my voice shake, and I knew that he heard it too. “You know Ren- I mean Mom.” I wasn’t allowed to call either of my parents by their first names to their faces. “It was just always hard being the parent, there, you know?” I snuck a peek at him from the corner of eye. I was relieved to see he looked relatively unperturbed, save for the way his knuckles were tightening around the steering wheel. “I don’t know,” I continued. “I just don’t think Mom wanted me very much anymore. And Phil…” I stopped talking then, and took a moment to think. How could I describe my relationship with Phil in such a way that wouldn’t involve enraging my police chief father? “Phil’s definitely glad I’m not there anymore,” I finished lamely. “Now he has Mom all to himself, and they can do all of his baseball stuff in Florida without having to worry about dragging me along with them.” 

“Hmph,” Charlie muttered, but he kept whatever opinion about Renee and Phil he was forming to himself, for which I was grateful. 

He turned us onto the highway that led to Forks, and I looked out of my window. Though it was nearing seven o’clock and therefore dark out, the shapes of the hulking trees around us were just concrete enough to make out. They passed us by in a blur as we sped down the road. I found myself unable to look away from them, although my early summers spent in Forks with Charlie meant that I had seen them many times before. Towering fir trees that never lost their needles were sandwiched between almost-as-large maples and oaks. Below the highway, swollen with January rain, was the Sol Duc river. I closed my eyes tried to listen for it, but the car was too loud and we were too far above it to hear any rushing water. That was the thing about the Pacific Northwest, I thought. Water was everywhere, whether you could hear it or not. And now, speeding along through the ancient old-growth forest, I felt like all the water around us could rise up and drown me. This alien planet I found Charlie driving me through was too green under his headlights. It looked nothing like the comforting brown desert I was used to. Even the air was wetter. Arguably it was easier to breathe here than it was back home, but I found myself struggling with it anyways as we approached Forks. The Welcome to Forks sign boasted a population of slightly over three-thousand. I added myself among those three-thousand unlucky souls as Charlie finally pulled us into his wet gravel driveway. 

Our nearly-silent drive home didn’t change once we got out of the car. I tried again to take my suitcases from Charlie, but he waved me away and with a lot of grunting, dragged both of them up his porch steps and into the foyer of his little white house. He slid off my backpack and took a moment to rest on the steps leading up to our bedrooms and one small bathroom. I shivered at the thought of having to share one shower with Charlie, but I pushed the thought to the back of my mind. Charlie’s house was cold and was clean in the way that meant nobody was ever really there much. I looked around surreptitiously as I stood and waited for him to catch his breath. Not a lot had changed in the three years since I had last been inside of it. The summer before I turned fifteen, I had thrown a big enough tantrum to warrant never returning to Forks as long as I could help it. That meant summers were from then on spent with Charlie in California. As I grew older and Renee grew more absent, my summer-long trips with Charlie turned into just a two-week vacation neither of us enjoyed. Now that I stood once again in his tiny house, I felt an odd sense of deja-vu. It was like I was fourteen again. Only different, because now I was here to stay for a lot longer than a summer, and I was stuck with Charlie for a lot longer than two weeks. He was my sole guardian now, and as I followed him huffing and puffing up the stairs to my room, I couldn’t quite decide how I felt about that. 

True to his word, Charlie had left my room exactly how I had left it. The faded purple walls were covered with remnants of my younger years, including pictures I had drawn all the way back in preschool. The window was closed but there was still a chill in the air that I chalked up to years of disuse and Fork’s rainy winter weather. I gave Charlie a small smile and thanked him for carrying my luggage up, which embarrassed him. Like me, he didn’t know how to accept most basic human conventions, including thank-yous, so he just turned tomato-red under his moustache and shuffled his feet. Before I could realize what he was doing and step away from him, he grabbed me and squished me into another hug, only he used both of his arms this time. I stood there, frozen, and felt my face smash against the canvas of his wet Carhartt jacket. My head only came up to his chest, and the zipper of his jacket pressed uncomfortably into my ear. I felt myself turn as red as he was. 

“I’ve really missed you,” he said gruffly, betraying his nature by showing emotion. “I know things haven’t been the best for you down there Bells, and I-” he stopped and took a deep breath. When he spoke again his voice was more controlled, and rumbled through his chest under my face. “I’m just so glad that you’re here now. This is a new beginning, okay? I’ve… I’ve got you now.” 

It was quite possibly the biggest display of emotion I had seen him put on in years. Even though I couldn’t see his face, I felt his chin rest on the top of my head and I knew his eyes were shut tight as he held me close to his chest. I raised my arms from my sides and unclenched my fists. Slowly, because I was terribly out of practice, I wrapped my arms around my father and returned his hug. I seized two fistfuls of his jacket and felt his arms tighten even more around me. It was the first real hug I’d had in such a long time that I felt every moment, every twitch of muscle, as individual experiences within themselves. It lasted longer than most of our hugs ever did, but I found myself okay with that. Truthfully, I found myself clinging to Charlie equally as hard as he had been clinging to me when he first pulled me to his chest. A shudder passed through my body and I stiffened, trying desperately to control it. I would not sob in front of Charlie. I refused to cry in front of anyone strictly on principle, and nothing would be more mortifying than breaking that rule in front of my father. I think he sensed that I was quickly losing control of the situation, because he gave me a pat on the back and swiftly let go of me. When I stepped back from him my eyes were trained to the floor at his feet. 

“Bella,” he said after a moment. I bit my lower lip but didn’t look up at him. When he reached forward and gently cupped his hand under my chin, I let him raise my head so he could look at me. To my credit, my eyes were completely dry. But to Charlie’s credit, I could tell that he knew that that was the first time I had been hugged in a very long time. His eyes studied my face and I knew he saw the ghost of the bruise that was planted just below my right eye. It was nothing, really, having already melted away into a sallow yellow color that was only the size of a dime. But it was enough for Charlie to notice. His eyes darkened and I watched him struggle to control the emotions on his face. Shock was swallowed by rage which was swallowed by sadness which was swallowed by a strange, almost empty look. He was trying so hard to avoid upsetting me that he looked like an entirely different person. Only his eyes betrayed him, and they looked down at me fiercely. It was a lot to feel at once, so I looked away quickly and focused all my attention on the doorknob behind him. I heard him swallow and then he dropped his hand from my face. 

“You’re home now,” he said, returning to his usual gruff demeanor. He took another step backwards and then turned to the door, which he shut quietly behind him as he left. The good thing about Charlie was that he knew when to give people space. I sat down on the edge of my bed and listened to his boots clomp their way down the wooden stairs.

It was then, finally, that I brought my knees up to chest, keeled sideways on the bedspread, and silently let myself fall apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: This chapter was much shorter than the following ones will be. Please review and tell me what you think! I know that it was very similar to the first few pages of canon here, but as the story progresses I'll start to branch out and make it my own. Just gotta set up some exposition first.


	2. The Thing

It was immediately apparent to me that Charlie was a lousy chef. The fried eggs and bacon he made for me the night I moved in were pretty much the only two things he knew how to cook. When I dragged myself out of my room after my breakdown, the smell of burning toast wafted up the stairs and met me in the middle of them.

I watched from the doorway as Charlie made his way around the small kitchen. He moved between the stove and the counter, alternating between flipping the bacon and buttering the toast. He looked up when he heard me enter the room.

“Hey,” he said. He turned his attention back to the bacon, which had started to crackle rather angrily. “Did you unpack a bit? Get a little settled?”

I swallowed and wiped the back of my sleeve over my cheek. My face was still a little damp from when I had scrubbed it a few minutes ago. I had tried in vain to wash my face of airport grime and any evidence that I had been crying. I knew that if I took another step into the light of the kitchen, Charlie would see my red-rimmed eyes and splotchy face.

“Yeah, I unpacked my clothes a little,” I told him. I stood on my tiptoes to see the contents of one of the frying pans better. “I think the eggs are burning, Dad.”

“Aw, shit,” he grumbled. He turned the heat down and flipped the eggs artlessly. I took a step forward to help, but he waved me away. “No, I got this,” he said. “Why don’t you just sit down?”

I looked around the kitchen. The dark paneled walls and yellow cabinets were exactly as I remembered them. I pointed to the cupboard behind Charlie’s head. “Are the plates still in there?” I asked. “I can at least set the table.”

Charlie nodded, so I edged my way behind him and started setting our places. When it was done, I sat and watched him bring the food over. He slid two eggs on my plate, and gave the last three to himself. The bacon had been placed between two paper towels on a plate, so I grabbed a few slices with my fingers, careful to avoid burning myself on the grease. When Charlie gave me a slice of toast, I noticed he gave me the only piece that wasn’t burned, and saved the blackened ones for himself. His eggs, too, were a leaking mess, but the ones on my plate were whole. The realization that he would willingly give me the choicest pieces of food, let alone cook for me at all, made my chest warm. I thanked him as he sat down across from me and dug in.

To my surprise, the food wasn’t terrible. It wasn’t the most aesthetically pleasing, and maybe a tad too salty, but it was better than I expected. To be fair, it was the first real meal I’d had all day, so hunger made it taste better than it normally would have. I scooped up some egg yolk with my toast.

Charlie was politely looking away from my face, no doubt having already noticed I’d been crying. “Figured breakfast for dinner would be okay for your first night back,” he said.

“It’s really good,” I told him.

“No need to lie,” he said, smiling into his cup. For the second time tonight his face turned bright red.

“No, I like it,” I insisted. “It’s nice having someone else cook for me for a change. I usually do the cooking at home.”

I could tell as soon as I said it that I probably shouldn’t have told Charlie that. His eyebrows knit together, and he put his cup back on the table a little harder than necessary. “Your mom doesn’t cook for you? At all?”

“No.”

“Hmph. Well, I’m obviously not the best at this,” he joked, breaking the tension. He held up his black piece of toast for my inspection. “But I try.”

After a few more jokes about his ineptitude in the kitchen, it was agreed upon that I would hold the keys to the banquet hall from now on. As I filled the sink with hot water for the dishes, (no dishwasher, ugh), Charlie pointed out to me the jar in one of the cupboards labeled: FOOD MONEY. I had already made a cursory rummage through the cupboards and the fridge, and knew I’d need to put that money to use sooner rather than later.

When the dishes were done, I wandered to the living room. Charlie was watching TV on the couch. I sat on the comfy green armchair and drew my legs underneath me. We sat in amiable silence for a while; Charlie, invested in his basketball game, and me, making a grocery list in the notes app on my phone. I was halfway through typing the word _bread_ , when my phone buzzed with a text.

It was Emma. I was immediately grateful that my phone was on vibrate. I didn’t know if Charlie was the type to pry, but I didn’t want to answer him should he ask who I was texting. Renee was always asking me that. She also usually demanded to read my texts if she deemed my answer even slightly suspicious. I took a deep breath and reminded myself that I didn’t live with Renee anymore. The phone buzzed again, louder this time, and my eyes immediately darted to Charlie. His head had turned, bored, when he heard the noise, and I saw him look at the phone in my hand. Someone on the TV blew a whistle, and his attention was snapped back to the screen.

He didn’t ask who I was texting.

I swiped up to close the notes app, and opened my texts, of which there were now three:

_Hey._

_so ur really gone huh?_

_you didn’t even say goodbye._

My throat felt like it was closing as I stared down at the screen. Emma knew exactly what to say to me to make me feel terrible, which was one of the reasons we broke up in the first place. I mumbled an excuse to Charlie about unpacking and went upstairs. I sat on the edge of my bed before I typed out my response to her.

_I left this morning. And I did say goodbye. Last week. You were just drunk._

I waited five, ten, fifteen minutes for her to reply. She didn’t. I rolled my eyes and tossed my phone to the other side of the bed. It was nine o’clock on a Saturday night. There was no doubt in my mind that Emma was already drinking. She was probably pregaming for a house party right now in someone’s basement, and the last thing she’d be checking her phone for would be texts from me. That was the thing about Emma. She’d message you first, just to make sure that she had your attention. Then she’d leave you hanging until hours later, when she deigned enough time had passed for you to miss her. If she ever replied at all.

The wind and rain whooshed against my windowpane. I put my head in my hands and focused on breathing. I wasn't used to all this change. I hated change. Change brought people like Phil and Emma into my life, and it took away things that I used to love, like my mother and Phoenix.

I sighed loudly.  Enough was enough. I would just strip off my pants, take off my bra, and force myself to go to bed. I extracted my toiletry bag from one of my suitcases and went to the bathroom. I stared in the mirror as I brushed my teeth. Staring back was a girl that I barely recognized. Already my skin was looking more sallow, almost unhealthy. It was like it knew where I had dragged it to, and was protesting my move by turning against me. I angled my chin upwards and saw that I was starting to break out a little on it. I felt betrayed by my own body.

My hair was a rats nest. It was sticking out in all directions, so after I spit out the toothpaste, I took a moment to tame it. I pulled out the braid that it was falling out of and ran my fingers through my hair. The dark brown strands contrasted violently against my pale skin. When I had washed my face earlier, I had immediately discovered that the lighting in Charlie’s bathroom was unflattering. But the lighting wasn’t entirely to blame for the girl looking back at me. Months of neglecting my body had made me look like the tired, burnt-out girl I saw in the mirror. Emma wasn’t the only one who went to those parties.

I turned away from the mirror in disgust. When I exited the bathroom, I heard Charlie walking around downstairs. It sounded like he was heading up for the night, so I ducked to my room quickly. I didn’t want him to see me standing there with no pants on. I guess I had to relearn what it was like to not have a private bathroom connecting to my room. I made a mental note to be more mindful of my father from now on as I crawled into bed.

I slept terribly that night. The deluge of winter weather never stopped. When I finally did sleep, it was in short snatches that left me feeling more tired than I had before. I was up early the next morning. When I checked my phone I saw that it wasn’t even eight, and that I had a new text notification from Emma. She had sent me a video. It wasn’t filmed by her, as she could be clearly scene with both hands occupied in the hair of some girl I didn’t recognize. People shrieked and bass thumped as Emma and this mystery girl grinded against each other to the music. I recognized Tomas’s basement by the shitty yellow couch behind them. Of course. He and Emma were thick as thieves, and he was probably the guy laughing behind the camera.

I shoved my phone under my pillow.

Charlie was up and dressed when I came downstairs. He smiled at me over his morning coffee, and immediately made me feel underdressed. I was only wearing ratty sweatpants, my shirt from yesterday, and the first hoodie I could find in my suitcase.

“How do you feel about a trip to La Push?” he asked, in lieu of good morning.

I poured myself a cup of coffee. Thankfully, Charlie at least had milk and sugar in stock. I’d have to pick up some hazelnut creamer when I went grocery shopping later. “La Push?”

Charlie nodded. “I want to take you to Billy’s. There’s something there that I think you’ll want to see.”

“Billy?” I echoed, completely lost. La Push was the tiny Indian reservation down by the coast. I had been there several times in my childhood, but I didn’t remember meeting anyone named Billy.

“Billy Black?” Charlie prompted. “Rachel and Rebecca’s dad? You used to play with them and their little brother Jacob when you were little. Billy’s an old friend of mine.”

Vague memories of forgotten camping trips made their way to the surface of my mind. I had tried very hard to forget all about them, as I hated camping and pretty much anything else outdoorsy, but they were obviously still buried way down in my brain. “Oh, yeah,” I said, remembering. “What do you mean, something I’ll want to see?”

Charlie looked uncomfortable. “I… I kind of got you a surprise,” he said. “I knew you were looking to buy a vehicle once you got up here, and Billy’s in a wheelchair now. He can’t drive his truck anymore. He agreed to sell it for cheap.”

My eyes narrowed, although I had to admit I was touched by Charlie’s thoughtfulness. I just really hated surprises. “How cheap is cheap?” I only had a little over fifteen hundred dollars to my name, after all. Money that was hard-earned at my fast-food job in Phoenix. I was loathe to spend it on a vehicle that I wouldn’t like.

“Well…” Charlie said, rubbing the back of his neck. “That’s the thing, honey. I kind of already bought it. We just have to go pick it up.”

My jaw dropped. Free. Wow. I couldn’t picture Renee doing anything this nice for me in a million years. Charlie nearly dropped his coffee as I jumped up to hug him. “Dad!” I said, letting him go, “I was going to do that myself. But...God… thank you.”

Charlie just smiled and shook his head at me. “I want you to be happy here, Bells. Now go get dressed. I told Billy I’d have you over there as soon as you woke up.”

One shower and about forty-five minutes later, I found myself riding through Forks in Charlie’s cruiser. It was a peaceful Sunday morning, albeit foggy. At least the rain had slowed to a slight drizzle instead of maintaining the horrid downpour from last night. I tried hard to keep my mind from straying to thoughts of Emma by listening intently to Charlie describe my new truck. By the time we got to the Black’s house, I was nervous. While I believed that Billy’s son was a good mechanic and therefore had done a good job with the truck, I wasn’t at all confident that I could maintain something that old. It was a 50’s model Chevy, and a stick shift. To my intense surprise, I absolutely adored it the second I spied it in their driveway. It was a faded reddish orange color. The cab was bulbous but solid looking, and I could tell that the entire thing was solid as hell. I didn’t have trouble imagining myself driving it. Charlie parked us right next to it. Two people, a boy and a man I assumed had to be Billy, judging by the wheelchair, made their way out of the house as I hopped out of Charlie’s car.

“There she is!” cried the man, as the boy pushed his wheelchair towards us. He strained a little to control the chair as the driveway transitioned into gravel. “Welcome back, Bella!”

The man leaned forward in the chair to shake my hand. I took it, and looked down into his eyes. Once we were face-to-face, I couldn’t believe that I had almost forgotten who Billy Black was. He wasn’t in a wheelchair the last time I saw him, but he had the same wide mouth and kind black eyes as I remembered from my childhood.

“Oh! Billy! I totally remember you now,” I said, smiling. I released him and took the hand the boy was reaching out to me. “And Jacob! Holy cow man, I haven’t seen you in ages! You’ve grown so much.”

And he had. The last time I had seen Jacob he had been a scrawny little boy of twelve. Now he was taller than Charlie. He must have been at least six foot one, which was huge compared to my height of five foot four. The most striking thing about him was his skin. It was a beautiful coppery color that put my own albino-esque skin to shame. I noticed that his hair, which was up in a man-bun, would probably be super long once he took it down. He gave me a smile with the same wide mouth as Billy’s.

“It’s been awhile, huh?” he said happily. “I’m glad you’re here. If it wasn’t for you, Dad would have me driving around in that thing instead of letting me rebuild my Rabbit.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder to a detached garage, where another car could be seen. I didn’t know anything about cars, but I assumed that the Volkswagen I saw was the Rabbit he was referring to.

Billy pulled a single key from his jacket pocket. He held it out to me, but jerked it away at the last second when I tried to take it from him. “Promise you’ll take good care of it, eh?” he said. “No speeding, right? ‘Cause I know of a certain cop who wouldn’t appreciate that very much.” He passed me the key for real this time, and laughed knowingly with Jacob.

“He’s joking,” Jacob explained, shrugging. “The truck can’t go over sixty without wobbling like crazy, so don’t try to push it past that.”

“And if anyone should be arrested for speeding, it’s this guy,” Charlie piped up from behind me. He glared at Billy playfully. “I’ve nearly had to pull you over from the passenger seat of that damned truck more times than I can count.” He rolled his eyes at me and Jacob. “He’s a freaking speed demon. I’m honestly surprised you never got us killed in an accident.”

“How do you think I got in this wheelchair?” Billy quipped.

The rain continued to drizzle on us as Charlie and Billy good-naturedly argued about who was a worse influence on the other. I stopped listening around the point they started reminiscing about their first beers. I turned around so I could appreciate my truck some more. When I tried to unlock it though, the key wouldn’t turn in the door handle.

Jacob stood next to me and put his hand over mine. He pushed my hand harder into the door handle, and then motioned for me to try turning it again.

“The key sticks really bad on this side,” he explained. He walked around to the other side, and waited patiently for me to climb in and unlock the passenger door for him. I took a good look around the cab as he got in. It was obvious that someone, I’m assuming Billy, had cleaned up the interior before the truck was sold. It smelled vaguely like tobacco, leather, and peppermint, which I found oddly comforting. The tan seats were in pristine condition, and an updated stereo had been installed in the dash. I couldn’t contain my smile as Jacob got in. Unlike me, Jacob had no problem sliding up to the seat. The truck had a slight lift, so I had to use both hands and the runner to climb my way up. He stepped in like he was made for it.

Charlie rapped a knuckle on my window. I cranked it down, which went much smoother than I expected from something so old.

“Billy and I are gonna go in,” he said. He looked up at the rain, which had started to pick up again. “Do you want to take it for a test drive?” Charlie leaned forward to check if that was okay with Jacob, who nodded enthusiastically. “Be safe. Stay in town,” Charlie said gruffly, giving my door a goodbye tap. He retreated with Billy to the Black’s little red house.

The truck started beautifully, which was impressive. The roar it made was louder than sin. It scared the crap out of me, to Jacob’s amusement.

“Shut up,” I said, as he laughed at me. “I didn’t flinch that bad.”

“Oh, you totally did,” he said. His white teeth flashed at me as he laughed some more. “What, were you expecting the thing to be _quiet_?”

“The Thing,” I repeated, as I pushed in the clutch. We took off, and I felt something close to joy leap in my chest. My own truck. My very own old, beautiful, loud truck. Maybe Forks wouldn’t be so bad after all. “That’s it. I’m christening the truck ‘The Thing’. It’s official.”

“Nice,” Jacob said. He was a very happy person. I had forgotten that in the years since I’d seen him last. We had reached the end of his driveway. “Left takes you to Forks,” he said. “Right will take you to the rest of the rez, and the beach.”

I turned right. Jacob mentioned First Beach as a possible destination, which I agreed to. I made him promise not to make me get out of the cab though.

“I don’t fuck with the rain,” I said. We were driving through town, and I recognized a few little shops Charlie and Billy used to take us to when we were little. The truck was handling well, which pleased me. At least now I knew that I wouldn’t have to face accepting a ride to school tomorrow in Charlie’s cruiser.

If Jacob was surprised at my language, he didn’t show it. “I hate to break it to you, Bella, but it rains here a lot. Especially in January. If you wanted to avoid getting wet, you picked the wrong time to move back.”

“It rains here year-round,” I pointed out. “And besides, it’s not like I chose to come back here.”

“No?” I looked over to see Jacob looking at me curiously. When he was standing, he was tall and gangly, but kind of intimidating. Now that he was sitting, I was able to see more of the baby fat he hadn’t quite lost from his cheeks and the tiny wisps of facial hair I doubt he’d ever had to shave. Jacob was young. I decided not to burden him with the truth of why I returned.

“My mom and step-dad were moving to another state, and Charlie wanted me to come live with him instead of having me move even farther away,” I said. There. It wasn’t exactly a lie, although it wasn’t exactly true either. Charlie had no idea that Renee and Phil were moving to Florida until Renee had called him and demanded that he take me.

“Oh,” Jacob said, accepting the explanation immediately. “That sucks, I’m sorry. Did you want to stay with your mom?”

“Um,” I swallowed and tried to think of what to say. I didn’t want to say too much and reveal the truth to Jacob, but I also didn’t want to outright lie. “I wanted to stay in Phoenix, yes,” I hedged.

“But I thought she was moving to another state?”

“Yeah, she was… I guess I didn’t really want to stay with her either.” I sighed and took the turn that Jacob was pointing out to me. “I just wanted to stay in Phoenix.”

“I’ve never lived anywhere but here,” he said. “What’s Phoenix like?”

“Sunny,” I replied. “Hot.” I tried to think of how I could describe Phoenix to Jacob, who didn’t seem like the type to party much. Since that was the majority of what I did in Arizona, I didn’t know much else about it to tell him. I doubt he cared about the boring suburbia I lived in, and I didn’t want to scare him by talking about the seedy nightlife Phoenix offered. “They have good Mexican food there,” I said lamely. We had made it to First Beach. I parked facing the ocean, which was grey and wildly thrashing against the shore. The parking lot was on a little cliff that overlooked the beach. A sandy trail led down to the water, packed down tightly with frequent use. I looked up and down the coastline appreciatively. “We don’t have views like this there, I can tell you that much.”

Jacob and I hung out in the truck for about fifteen minutes. It was kind of cathartic, watching the rain fall on the beach from the comfort of the toasty cab. We sat in a sort of awkward silence at first. It was weird, being back in La Push with him. We were both older now, and I could tell from the way he was looking at me that he was clearly admiring. I sat with my hands in my lap, trying to think of things to say, when my phone rang.

“Jesus Christ,” I muttered. Emma’s name flashed up at me when I pulled the phone out of my purse. Jacob looked over and read the name, no doubt surprised at my tone of voice. He pointed to the picture that came up on the screen. It was her contact photo. I had forgotten to remove it when I scrubbed all other pictures of her off my phone, since it was saved in her contact and not in my camera roll. It was a picture of the two of us on a bench. I was sitting in her lap, and she had her hands over my eyes, laughing hard at some joke I’d long forgotten.

“Who’s that?” he asked. I clicked ‘decline call’ and rolled my eyes. Jacob mistook my eye-roll as a slight about his nosiness, and held up his hands. “Sorry, I didn't mean to look. You just sounded so… angry.”

“No, you’re good,” I said. I looked straight out of the windshield to the beach below. “That was just a friend from Phoenix.”

“She looked like a close friend, from that picture.”

I felt my palms get sweaty. I kept staring out the windshield. “She’s my ex-girlfriend. We broke up like a month ago.”

Jacob made a noise of surprise in his throat. I felt my face flush, and immediately wished I had lied and said that she was just a regular friend. I looked over at him.

“I’m a… lesbian,” I said, wincing at the word. I knew from experience that it evoked strong emotions in people, and I wasn’t sure how Jacob would react to it. “Sorry, I just-” I took a deep breath, and focused on slowing my words down. “Don’t tell Charlie,” I pleaded.

“What? Don’t say _sorry_ ,” Jacob said. He leaned a little closer to me. “Bella, it’s cool. I won’t tell anyone. I promise.”

“Oh. Okay. Thanks.” The atmosphere in the truck, previously awkward, lightened considerably. I gave Jacob a small smile. “I’m glad Charlie brought me down here today. You’re kind of really cool.”

Jacob flashed me that blinding grin of his. “Oh, I know,” he said smugly. He leaned back and put his arm up on the back of the bench seat. “You’re looking at the kid voted ' _Most Kind of Really Cool_ ’ in his school’s yearbook last year.”

“Wow. I gave you that compliment and you made me regret it _immediately_.” I laughed and started to back up carefully out of our spot. We were the only ones in the lot, so I didn’t have to worry about hitting other cars. I just wasn’t used to handling a vehicle that massive.

Jacob made more cracks about how cool he was on the ride back to his place. By the time we pulled up, it was decided that he ranked a solid eight-point-five out of ten on his imagined scale of coolness. He got points for having long hair, his talents as a mechanic, and the fact that he could roll joints tighter than anyone else in his class. He came up with a nine-point-two for me. I got ranked slightly higher than him on account of that I had my license, an extensive snapback collection, and as he put it, a “chill lesbian vibe”.

It was ridiculous, because I barely knew him, but I found that I actually really liked Jacob Black. He seemed to like me too, which made me feel strange. We exchanged numbers in the truck before I climbed out and followed him inside the house. Billy and Charlie were watching a football rerun in the living room when we walked in. I sat next to Charlie on the couch and Jacob took a spot on the floor. We spent the rest of the day with them while the rain pitter-pattered down on their roof. I helped Jacob bake us all a frozen pizza for lunch, and then Billy pulled out some fish fry from the freezer for dinner. Since it was a school night, Charlie made us leave at around seven o’clock. I followed him home in the truck, which gave me plenty of time to build up some anxiety about school tomorrow.

Charlie and I retired to our rooms as soon as we got home. He had to be up extra early for work, due to some kind of problem they were having at the station. I just wanted to curl up under the covers and drown. When my head was on my pillow and the distraction of the Black’s house was gone, all my feelings came flooding back. It was starting to sink in that I really lived in Forks now. Not just for a summer. It was permanent. And tomorrow, I’d have to wake up early and take my chances at some new school with less kids than I had in my entire Junior class in Phoenix. Jacob went to school on the reservation, so I didn’t even have one friendly face to look forward to. I sighed and pulled the covers up over my head.

Despite my better judgement, I thought about Renee. I wondered if she and Phil had left for Florida yet. I missed my old room. I missed the stray cat that sometimes wandered into our backyard at night. I missed the color brown. Everything was too green here, and I had nothing to remind me of the desert anymore except for the photos on my phone.

Thinking about my phone reminded me of Emma. I screwed my eyes up tight, and tried not to think about her. Thinking about her hurt more than anything else. She hadn’t left me a voicemail, and she didn’t text me back after I declined her call. I unlocked my phone and brought up Instagram. I told myself it was something to scroll through. Something to pass the time until I got tired enough for sleep, but that was a lie. Emma’s name was already under the search bar in the ‘recently searched’ section. I clicked it and opened her profile. She had a new post, made at 10:42 a.m. today.

It was a picture of me.

She hadn’t tagged me in it, so I didn’t get a notification when she posted it. Thinking back, it must have been put up a little bit before she called me. I held my breath as I looked at the picture. I was sitting in the passenger seat of her car, drinking an iced coffee. The summer sun streamed in the window behind my head, and glinted off my hair. I was turned to face the camera, showing off a new rip in the knee of my jeans. They were my favorite black skinny jeans. I had my left foot on Emma’s lap, with my leg bent so she could see the rip clearly. My eyes looked tired. She had captioned it: _my klutz_.

Something in my chest was hurting kind of badly, and before I knew it I was opening up my recent call list. Emma’s name was the first one listed. Her missed call notification was bright red. I clicked on it.

She picked up on the second ring. “Hello?”

“Hey.”

“You called me back?” It was a question, not a statement. It was quiet on her end of the line. I wondered if she was alone.

“Yeah…” I took a moment to think about what to say next. I had called her back impulsively. I hadn’t stopped to consider what would happen after she answered. “Why’d you call earlier?” 

Emma sighed. “I wanted to apologize,” she said. “That video I sent was uncalled for.”

She sounded upset, which made me chest ache more. “Don’t worry about it,” I told her. “It’s not like it bothered me.”

It was quiet for a moment. “It didn’t bother you?” she asked.

“No,” I lied.

“I wanted it to,” she said quietly. “Did you see my post?”

I turned onto my back and pulled my head out of the covers. My room was dark, and the rain was still pounding on the roof and window, but I didn’t feel like drowning quite as much. “I saw it,” I said slowly. I kept my voice down so Charlie couldn’t hear me.

“You didn’t like it.”

“You didn’t tag me.”

I could hear the smile in Emma’s voice when she answered. “I knew you’d see it anyways,” she said. I didn’t respond, and the silence stretched on between us. “Goodnight Bella,” she said softly. She hung up before I could answer her.

Later, I found it very hard to sleep. My mind kept returning to La Push and to Jacob. I thought about the car ride home from First Beach, and the strange feeling I got when I realized I liked him. After awhile I decided it was surprise. I hadn’t expected to make a friend so quickly in Forks. But that wasn’t what kept bothering me. There was something else that I felt. When he asked to put his number in my phone, and I knew he liked me too, I felt something… odd. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Eventually I got too tired to keep thinking, and I found myself drifting to sleep. It was there, in the hazy limbo between sleep and consciousness, I realized what emotion I had been looking for.

Guilt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Well, that's it for Chapter 2! I hoped you guys liked it. Get excited for the next chapter, because Bella is going to meet a certain someone in it. Let me know in the reviews what you think, and as always, come say hi on tumblr! Url: iloveduinsecret.


	3. First Day

I slept like shit for the second night in a row. By the time my alarm went off, I had already been awake for forty-five minutes. I wasn’t sure if my sleeplessness was caused by the downpour going on outside, or just the simple anxiety of starting a new school. 

When I got downstairs, Charlie was already gone. He had mentioned something last night about having to be at the station early, and not to expect him home until around six tonight, if not later. I entered the kitchen in sock feet. My footsteps echoed extra loudly in the empty house. The fridge was barren save for some milk, condiments, and a few eggs. The cupboards fared no better. I could have had cereal for breakfast, but I settled on coffee instead. I wasn’t really a breakfast person anyways. I brought my mug upstairs with me, being careful not to spill anything on the carpet. I didn’t quite trust myself not to slip and fall in Charlie’s house. I was still getting used to my new surroundings, and the last thing I wanted was to ruin his floor. 

I looked over my wardrobe options as I sipped my coffee. My suitcases were still half-opened, with clothes scattered haphazardly in and around them. I settled on a pair of black skinny jeans and a dark blue sweater. I wasn’t the most fashionable of people, and my options were severely limited due to the fact that half of my Phoenix wardrobe wouldn’t survive in this weather. I thought wistfully of my favorite eyelet lace shirt as I carried my clothes to the bathroom. 

It didn’t take as long to get ready as I had hoped for. Once I was showered and dressed, there was nothing left to do but wait. I didn’t have to leave for another ten minutes, so I killed the time by reapplying my eyeliner. 

The school wasn't hard to find. Like everything else in this town, it was right off the highway. Rain streamed off my windshield as I pulled into the parking lot. The school was a collection of red-bricked buildings tied together with walkways. I bit my lip and tried to figure out what to do next. I didn’t have my schedule yet, and Charlie had neglected to tell me where to find the main office. After half a minute of searching, I found it. The sign declaring it the office was halfway covered with shrubbery. It looked exactly like all the other buildings that were piled around it, except for one huge one that I had to assume was the gym. I sighed and parked in the spot closest to it. 

The parking lot was starting to fill up as I made my way towards the office. I noticed that most of the cars were older models. Nothing like the new Audi's and BMW's that populated my old high school’s lot. I felt the knot in my stomach unclench just a bit. My truck wouldn’t stick out here. If I had driven The Thing in Phoenix, I would have definitely been noticed, and probably mocked. I pulled my hood on as I approached the office, and tried to keep a low profile. 

It was warmer than I expected it to be inside. A long counter divided the entry room in half. On top of it, brightly colored fliers and wire trays were interspersed between potted plants and sign-in clipboards. When I approached, a pleasant looking middle-aged woman popped her head up over the counter. She was shorter than even I was, and she held a phone to her ear. 

“Just a minute, dear,” she said, placing her hand over the receiver. I nodded and waited for her to finish. She pulled a chair towards her and sat down at a computer, which further reduced her already tiny-height. I shifted my weight back and forth between my legs and looked around. It seemed like your average high-school office. Unlike Phoenix, there were no security guards or metal-detectors by the doors leading out to the rest of the school. It seemed like the only security Forks High School had was the small, black metal fence that I saw wrapping around the office and enclosing the rest of the school buildings. You’d think I’d be relieved that I wouldn’t have to deal with any of that stuff anymore, but it really only made me all the more uneasy. Where was the feel of the institution? 

“How can I help you?” the woman asked. She had hung up her phone and was looking up at me expectantly. 

“Um, I’m Isabella Swan.” 

“Oh, of course.” Her eyes lit up. I was expected, then. No doubt a topic of gossip in this tiny town. The daughter of the Chief, come home at last. I wondered how many people Charlie had told about me.

“Thanks,” I said, when she slid a schedule across the counter to me. She included a map of the school, which was already highlighted with the best routes to take to get there. I internally cringed when I imagined myself having to use it. Nothing screamed “new kid” quite like burying your nose in a map all day. 

Before I headed back out the door, the receptionist kindly informed me where to find student parking. Apparently I had parked in the teachers-only section. “Have a good day, and good luck,” she said, as I headed out into the rain once more. 

The walk back to my truck was so much worse than it was the first time around. I was walking  _ into _ the rain this time, instead of having my back to it, and the population of students was growing considerably. I felt overwhelmed. My old high school was literally three times larger than this one, but not recognizing a single face that I passed made the crowd feel huge. I tried to keep my head down as I sloshed back to my parking spot. The Thing let out it’s deafening roar as I carefully backed into the line of traffic. Already people were looking at me, no doubt wondering who was making all the noise. I kept my eyes forward and ignored the stares. 

My first class was English, in building three. The big ‘3’ painted onto the bricked building made it easy to spot when I entered campus. I followed the crowd of kids walking into school and tried to take deep breaths. I was feeling more and more anxious by the minute. I stuck my hands in my pockets so they wouldn’t shake. My new rain jacket made an annoying swishy noise with every step I took. It had a big hood though, which thankfully hid my face from the kids walking on either side of me. I don’t think anyone had noticed me yet. 

I entered the English classroom, which was mostly empty, and looked around. Two girls were hanging their rain jackets on hooks by the door, so I followed their lead and hung mine up too. A youngish-looking man who I assumed was the teacher was kneeling on the ground by a bookshelf in the corner. I walked up to him and tried to ignore the people staring at me. Now that my jacket was off, everyone could see my face. I prayed to God that it wasn’t as red as it felt. 

“I’m Bella Swan,” I said awkwardly. 

The man on the floor looked up from the books he was shelving. He gave me a kind smile, which made me feel worse. I must have really looked pathetic if he was taking pity on my already. I was sure my face was red now, if it wasn’t before. 

He stood up and introduced himself to me as Mr. Mason. He had a packet on his desk already waiting for me; it was the syllabus and a summary of the course reading list. Thankfully he didn’t make me introduce myself to the class, who were pretty much all here now. I made my way to my assigned seat without stumbling, which was a small miracle. People actually turned around in their chairs to stare at me as I sat down. I returned a few shy smiles to the people nearest to me, but class started before any of them had a chance to ask me anything. I looked through the reading list as Mr. Mason talked. Chaucer, Faulkner, Shakespeare… all familiar to me. I had read everything on the reading list already, which was a nice surprise. It had been years since I read them, but it was still better than having to start from scratch. 

About a half-hour into the class, I got the impression that I was going to be in for a long day. The kids around me kept turning around in their seats to look at me. They didn’t even try to hide it. I wondered idly if there was a correlation between sun-deprivation and social awkwardness. It seemed like no one here knew that it’s rude to stare. 

When the bell rang, I had barely risen from my chair before I was cornered by an Asian boy with a mop of jet-black hair. His cologne, while not awful, was so strong that I could smell it from where I stood two feet away. He smiled brightly at me and gave a small wave. 

“You must be Isabella Swan!” he said, as though he already knew the answer. 

“Just Bella, but… yeah,” I said. I felt the knot in my chest tighten up. Everyone in our near proximity had turned to gape at me. I felt my face flush again. 

“I’m Eric,” said the boy. He trailed after me as I followed the crowd of kids leaving the classroom. He hadn’t stopped smiling. I got the feeling that he was enjoying being the first person brave enough to approach me. All around us, kids were trying to eavesdrop, and were doing a terrible job of hiding it. “Where’s your next class?” 

I looked down at the papers in my hand. “Um… Trigonometry. In building six,” I said. 

“I’m heading to building four. Want me to show you the way?” he asked.

Eric was definitely over-helpful, but I really didn’t feel like fishing my map out of my bag again. So I agreed, and let him steer me through the hall. When we left the building, the rain was still whooshing down on either side of the covered walkway. Kids were laughing and talking and bustling about all around us. I was jostled into shoulders and bumped into other students as I tried to keep up with Eric. His legs were much longer than mine, and he walked almost as fast as he talked. 

“So, where are you from? You’re Chief Swan’s daughter, right?”

I sighed. Of course he knew that. “Yeah,” I said. “I’m from Phoenix.” 

“Arizona?” he said incredulously, as though there were another Phoenix. “Wow. You’re probably used to a lot of sun then.” 

I shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.” My stomach was clenching up again as we talked. I hated meeting new people. My palms felt sweaty and I tried to will my face not to turn red again. Although Eric seemed nice, I found it hard to talk to him. Small talk was never my forte. 

“Do you miss it there?” 

His question was innocent, I know, but it felt strangely pointed to me. I had to remind myself that he knew nothing about my life, and was only trying to make conversation. “I’ve only been away from it for two days now, so no,” I said. 

We passed through the cafeteria and made our way to the buildings on the farthest side of campus from the parking lot. I saw that the school edged up to the woods, just like everything else in Forks. Eric walked me all the way to my classroom’s door, although it was only one of four inside of building six. 

“Well, hopefully we’ll have more classes together soon,” he said, and leaned against the door frame.

I smiled at him vaguely and went inside, narrowly avoiding stepping on his toes as I did so. 

Trigonometry was much worse than my English class. Mr. Varner, the teacher, made me introduce myself to everyone before he let me sit down. I couldn’t stop blushing. On my way to my seat, I slammed my foot into the desk of the girl sitting in front of me, and the sound made everyone look at me again. Later, a few kids introduced themselves to me and asked about my old school. The girl who’s desk I had walked into, Jessica, turned around in her chair to listen as I told them about Phoenix. She put her elbows on the front of my desk and leaned against it like we were old friends. 

“So, what do you guys do for fun down there?” she asked me. 

I tried to think of an acceptable answer. Saturday nights spent with Emma and our friends flashed through my mind. I didn’t remember doing anything particularly fun. Most of our free time was spent drinking, smoking weed, or doing other delinquent shit that I was sure would scare the good children of Forks. “I used to go hiking a lot,” I lied. 

Jessica hummed in approval and spent the next fifteen minutes blabbering on about all the great hiking trails in and around Forks. I halfway hoped Mr. Varner would notice and make her stop talking to me, but no such luck. When the bell rang for the end of class, it was clear that Jessica had decided to take me under her wing. 

“I have Spanish next too,” she said, as we walked back outside. She was several inches shorter than me, but her personality more than made up for it. Jessica seemed like an extremely talkative and bubbly person. She bobbed along at my side as we walked back to the main section of campus. 

My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was loud enough that Jessica heard, and it seemed like she took it as permission to take her own phone out. She checked her Snapchat messages while simultaneously prattling on about Forks High. I halfway listened and read the text Emma had just sent. 

_ school sucks without you. Come back. _

I tried to think of what to say to her. Did she really want me to come back to Phoenix? Or was she just trying to make sure that she still had my attention, even an entire country away? The latter was more likely, although I couldn’t deny that a small part of me was hoping for the first. I typed out a reply when I sat down in Spanish. 

_ School has always sucked. At least you’re actually going now that I’m not there to skip with you.  _

She texted back immediately, which was surprising. 

_ everyone is asking why u left. They think it’s cause of me lol _

I looked around the room. The teacher hadn’t entered the room yet, and I wasn’t the only person with my nose buried in my phone. My ears felt hot when I imagined everyone talking about me back in Phoenix. How stupid did they have to be to think that I left because of Emma? All at once I felt angry and more than a little bitter. I was an idiot for texting Emma like we were still friends. I decided ignoring her would be best, so I slipped my phone back into my pocket without replying. Next to me, Jessica called my name. I looked over to see her angling her front camera towards me. She was snapchatting a video of us, so I plastered a smile on and leaned closer to her. 

“What’s your snap?” she asked, after she ended the video. I gave it to her just as the teacher, Mrs. Geoffe, walked in. We spent the rest of the period conjugating verbs and taking notes. The morning was going relatively smoothly for my first day, but I still felt anxious, and now because of Emma, a little pissed. When the bell rang for lunch, I tried to force myself out of my head by listening intently to Jessica talk to me about her friends. 

I guess she had already decided that I would be sitting with her at lunch, because she stayed by my side all the way through the lunch line. She had given me the rundown on a lot of the students in our year, and although I had no idea who she was talking about, I was starting to recognize some faces in the halls from my earlier classes. We sat at a mostly-full table near the middle of the cafeteria. I tried in vain to remember everyone's names as Jessica introduced us , but I forgot most of them instantly. I was sandwiched between her and another girl who kindly reminded me that her name was Angela. 

“So how are you liking Forks?” Angela asked me. I had been pushing my food around my tray nervously, so I put my fork down and made myself put my hands in my lap to avoid fidgeting. 

“It’s okay,” I said. “Pretty rainy, obviously. I’m not used to that yet.” 

Angela nodded. Like me, she seemed shy. Not as loud as the other kids. Everyone else was busy joking around with each other and talking about some other people I hadn’t met yet, but so far Angela had stayed out of their conversation She was the first person at Forks High I had met who I could actually see myself being friends with. She gave me a shy smile, and I noticed that she was pretty. “Doesn’t rain a lot in Phoenix, huh?” she asked. 

I rolled my eyes before I could stop myself. “Somehow everyone seems to know that’s where I’m from,” I said. I smiled at her again before she could go and get her feelings hurt by me rolling my eyes at her. “I guess it’s true what they say about small towns. But yeah, no. It only rains a few times a year there.” 

“That’s crazy,” she said. “I would burn up and die.” 

I opened my mouth to reply, but I found myself distracted when the doors opened across the cafeteria. There was no reason why I looked up in that instant, really, but as soon as I saw the group of kids that were walking inside, I couldn’t look away. 

They were five of the most beautiful people I’d ever seen. Leading the way was a tall blonde boy with close-cropped hair. He was holding hands with a tiny girl about Jessica’s height, who’s walk was so graceful that it looked like it belonged to a model at fashion week. Following the couple were two more boys. The first was lankier than the others, although still obviously fit. His reddish brown hair was wavy and plastered to his forehead from the rain. The second one was the tallest of all of them, with huge muscles that strained against his t-shirt. He wasn’t wearing a jacket or even a hoodie, despite the weather. Trailing behind him was easily the most gorgeous girl I had ever seen in my life. She was tall and blonde, like the first boy, but not as angular as he was. She had more curves, and I forced myself to look away from her before Angela could see and find it suspicious. 

“Who are they?” I asked her, totally abandoning our earlier conversation. I watched them sit down at an empty table across the cafeteria, being careful to avoid looking at either girl again. Once they sat down, it was harder to see them through the crowd of kids. Next to me, Jessica jumped into the conversation as though she’d been waiting for me to ask that very question. 

“God, they’re like perfect, aren’t they?” she sighed. Angela laughed at her and rolled her eyes. “Those are the Cullens.” 

“They’re all one family?” I asked. I frowned and watched the small girl kiss the blonde boy on the cheek. They were all talking to each other, although it looked like they were much more serious than the rest of the kids in the cafeteria. The blonde girl seemed to be arguing with the biggest boy over something. “She just kissed him though.” 

Angela laughed again. “They’re all foster kids. They’re not really related.” 

Jessica put her hand on her chin and stared at the odd family with me. “It’s weird though. They’re dating each other even though they all live together. The dark-haired girl is Alice Cullen. She’s like, really weird.” 

“And the boy she’s with is Jasper Hale,” Angela said. “He’s twins with the blonde girl; her name is Rosalie.” 

“The hottest one is Emmett,” said Jessica wistfully. I noticed she hadn’t taken her eyes off the big one. “The redheaded one is Edward. But don’t get your hopes up. None of them date. Well, none of them date  _ outside the family _ ,” she added, laughing.

Edward. Emmett. Jasper. Alice. Rosalie. All strange, unpopular names. I bit my lip and turned to look at Jessica again. “So, Edward, Emmett, and Alice are Cullens? And Jasper and Rosalie are Hales?” I asked. She nodded. “What grades are they in?” 

“The twins and Emmett are seniors,” she replied. “The other two are our age.” Jessica wrinkled her nose. “Gross, though, huh?” 

Her voice held all the condemnation of a small town. Although, to be fair, I had to admit that it would have caused a stir in Phoenix too. I snuck a glance at the family again. To my surprise, the blonde girl seemed to be looking directly at me. I felt my breath jolt in my lungs and my face flushed. Despite being caught staring, she didn’t look away. Rosalie. I sounded out her name in my head. Staring was the wrong word for what she was doing. She wasn’t staring-- she was  _ glaring _ . 

“Why is she looking at me like that?” I said quietly. I stared down at my tray, my ears burning. 

Angela shrugged. “That’s just the way her face looks,” she said. She took a bite of a carrot stick, her face contemplative. “Rosalie always looks angry like that. I doubt she’s staring at you specifically.” 

Obviously bored with the conversation, Jessica switched topics to the upcoming weekend. She and a boy sitting across from us got the entire table involved into a discussion about taking a beach trip. I tuned them out and tried to calm myself down. My anxiety was skyrocketing again, and I felt awful. I stood up unceremoniously from my seat and slung my backpack over my shoulder. 

“I think I’m gonna leave early to figure out where my next class is,” I explained to Angela, who seemed to be the only person to notice me stand. A few tables over I caught Eric’s eye, who gave me a big wave and a grin. I turned my back to him in the hopes that he would stop. 

“I’ll come with you,” Angela said. She followed me to a garbage can in the middle of the room, where we dumped our paper trays. “What class do you have next?” 

“Biology,” I said. Two boys walked into the cafeteria at that moment, bringing a cold gust of air with them from outside. It ruffled my hair and made me shiver. I followed Angela through the doors that the boys had just opened, but I stopped in the doorway and turned around. I felt like someone was watching me. 

The first thing I saw was that Rosalie Hale was still glaring at me. Only this time, it was so much worse than it was only minutes before. She had an expression on her face of such intense hatred that it made me physically recoil. It was like looking at a vengeful angel. Or maybe a serial killer. My mind raced with what I possibly could have done to this stranger to make her look like that, but I came up blank. 

The second thing I saw was that all four of her siblings had at least one hand on her. They were doing it subtly, so no other kids noticed, but they were holding her in her chair. A thrill of fear went through me when I realized it looked like they were holding her back from  _ me _ . I turned around to make sure there was nothing behind me she could be looking at, but the only other person there was Angela, who was checking her phone and not paying any attention to the Cullens. I turned back to face Rosalie and swallowed hard, still halfway out of the cafeteria door.

“Bella? You coming?” Angela raised her voice to be heard over the pounding rain on the walkway’s metal roof. I shivered again and ripped my gaze away from Rosalie, who was still looking half-insane. 

“Uh, yeah,” I said. I turned on my heel and caught up to her. My mind was going a mile a minute, and I felt sick. Maybe Forks was making me go insane quicker than I thought it would. The farther we walked from the cafeteria, the more I reasoned with myself that there was no possible reason for that girl to hate me as much as I thought she did. When Angela and I reached the biology classroom, the bell ending lunch rang and I vowed to put the entire thing behind me. I still had two classes to get through today, and had no time to let my anxiety get the best of me. 

Angela had biology with me, which made me feel a little better. It wasn’t rare, in a school this small, to have the same classes as a lot of other kids, but it was nice knowing for certain that I wouldn’t be totally alone. I sat with her at her assigned table until the teacher came. He introduced himself as Mr. Banner and gave me an assigned seat two tables behind Angela. I looked over the syllabus he gave me while the room started to fill up. 

It was an advanced placement class, which meant that I wasn’t as comfortable with the material as I was with my English class or even Trig. But everything in the syllabus looked simple enough. I was taking the same class back home, and it looked like we were a few weeks ahead in Phoenix of where they were here. This week was slated for learning about the Cell Cycle, which was still fresh in my memory. I leaned back in my chair and listened to the thirty-second tardy bell ring. I wanted to go home. 

“Nearly late again, Mr. Cullen,” Mr. Banner chided at the front of the room. I looked up and saw the redheaded Cullen boy slide in through the door. He looked agitated, although he fixed his face to a more socially acceptable smile as he entered the classroom. 

“Yeah, I know,” he said, quietly enough that I had to strain to hear him over the chatter of the other students. The bell to commence class rang loudly. “Won’t happen again, I promise.” 

“You say that every single day,” Mr. Banner said, although he smiled. “Take your seat, Edward.” 

I averted my eyes from Edward as he walked toward the tables. I didn’t want him to see me staring at him again. To my surprise, his assigned seat was next to mine. He didn’t say anything as he sat down, but I wasn’t sure if that was because he found the whole experience in the lunchroom as awkward as I did, or simply because Mr. Banner had already started addressing the class. 

The class period consisted of mostly note-taking. I took my notes diligently, although I hated every second of it. I had skipped a lot of school back in Phoenix, and I had vowed after breaking up with Emma that I would use my opportunity for starting over in Forks to be a better student. That meant taking notes even though I would have rather hopped the school’s fence and driven my truck back home. Every once in awhile I caught a kid turning to stare at me, but I recognized almost all of the faces in the room from earlier classes, and it seemed that most of them had gotten a good enough look at me earlier. I felt relieved that my novelty was starting to wear off even a little bit. 

When there was only fifteen minutes left of class, Mr. Banner passed out an assignment sheet and told us to work with our tablemate on it until class was over. I sighed and shook out my hand, which was starting to cramp from all the note-taking. Beside me, Edward cleared his throat and leaned forward to read the assignment. I turned to look at him, and was surprised to see that he looked extremely frustrated. What was even more shocking than that, was that his perfect face looked even better up close than it had when he entered the cafeteria earlier. He was more handsome than any movie star in any magazine. 

“I’m Edward, by the way,” he said suddenly. He looked up and I flushed, embarrassed at being caught checking him out. “You must be Isabella Swan?” 

I nodded. “Just Bella,” I said. “Nice to meet you.” 

“Likewise,” he said coolly. 

The worksheet was easy, and we breezed through it in about five minutes. Edward made no move to start a conversation afterwards, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to, so I spent the last ten minutes of class doodling on my notes. When the bell rang, I stood up and stretched. My last class of the day was gym. In Phoenix, I only had to take two years of it. Forks required it all four years. It truly was my own hell on Earth.

The boy who talked about the beach trip at lunch with Jessica was also in this class, and I realized when he walked up next to me that he was also in my English class this morning. He smiled at me and followed me out into the hallway. I vaguely remembered that his name started with an ‘M’. 

“Hey,” he said, once we were free of the classroom. “Need help finding your next class?” 

I waved goodbye to Angela as she parted ways with me and entered a classroom across the hall. My rain boots squeaked on the linoleum floor as I followed the crowd outside, which irritated me more than it should have. 

“I have Gym, I think I can find it,” I said. The boy held the door for me when we entered the walkway area. “Thank you, though,” I added, not wanting to be rude. 

The boy,  _ Mike _ , I finally remembered, stayed by my side. “Oh, sweet! I have Gym too,” he said. His blonde hair was slicked back into a neat coiff, and although he had a bit of a baby face, he wasn’t unattractive. The way he was grinning at me made me wonder if I should tell him he wasn’t my type. Then I remembered what a small town Forks was and I decided to keep my mouth shut. I just returned his smile and listened to him talk to me about the weather. He had moved to Forks from California when he was ten, and so he knew how I felt about the rain. He was a talker, like Jessica, but unlike her he left room for the other person to actually engage in the conversation. By the time we got to the gym, I found that, against my better instincts, I rather liked him. We parted ways at the locker rooms, but not before Mike promised to stand by me during warm-ups. I just nodded and tried not to encourage him too much. 

The gym teacher, Coach Clapp, found me a uniform. Thankfully, she didn’t make me dress down for the day. I got to take today off, but had to participate tomorrow, which made me feel ill. The gym had three different teachers and the gym was split between their classes. There was one class entirely made up of Juniors, one made up of Seniors, and mine, which was a Junior/Senior split. Mike was in the split class as well, and I saw Jessica sit down on the other side of him as we waited for Coach Clapp to take attendance. The gym was old and echoey, and the voices of each teacher calling roll bounced around the walls. I was mostly zoned-out until I heard Coach Clapp call, “Alice Cullen!” 

“Present,” came a clear voice to my left. Her voice was impossibly bell-like and extremely attractive. I looked over at her. She had short black hair that was cut somewhere between pixie-length and a bob. It was gently wavy and looked super soft. Like the rest of the kids, she was dressed in the school’s gym uniform, but she pulled it off in a way that nobody else did. She was smiling politely at Coach Clapp and was looking every inch the model student. I noticed that she was sitting apart from the rest of us, which I found odd. The kids sitting closest to her had their backs angled away from her, as though excluding her without even realizing it. 

“Where’s your sister?” asked Coach Clapp. She looked to Alice’s side, and I took it to mean that Rosalie often sat by her. I remembered how they sat at lunch; just the five of them with no other friends. Jessica’s assessment that the Cullens were weird was starting to make sense. Edward wasn’t very sociable in Biology either. I wondered if they ever branched out beyond their adoptive family. It seemed strange that such beautiful people weren’t the most popular ones at school. 

“She didn’t come to school today,” Alice said. I was startled by her outright lie. She didn’t look like the type to lie to a teacher. Her face was too innocent for that. I stared at her, but I was the only one to pay attention. Everyone else was still busy talking amongst themselves. Besides me, Coach Clapp seemed to be the only one noticing Alice’s existence. 

“She’s sick?” asked Coach Clapp. She made a mark on her clipboard, which I assumed was to note Rosalie’s absence. 

“Very,” said Alice. She turned her head and met my eyes. My heart-rate picked up embarrassingly fast. It was like she had known I was eavesdropping. I wondered if she knew how invested in her conversation I was. I got the feeling that she did. 

“Hmm. Well, okay. Tell her I hope she feels better,” said Coach Clapp. She moved onto the next name on her roll call.

“I will,” said Alice. She didn’t look away from me. She gave me a wide smile that made me blush. It was a friendly sort of smile, although cocky almost. Her face was like looking into the sun. I tore my eyes away and turned to Mike, throwing myself into his conversation with Jessica before I embarrassed myself further. 

After a period spent on the bleachers watching everyone else sweat, I was exhausted. My day was catching up to me now that it was over. I was one of the first people out into the parking lot, which was nice as it made it easier to back my truck out of its spot. The rain was still coming down strong, but it bothered me less than it did earlier. I felt much more relaxed, and took a moment to breathe and congratulate myself on making it through my first day. It was hard, and I hated it, but I did it. The Thing groaned and protested as I entered the line of traffic, but I ignored it in my haste to get home. I planned to go grocery shopping after school, but I had forgotten to grab the food money this morning before I left. I let my mind wander to the familiar task of meal-planning while I waited to exit the lot. 

I was almost out of the parking lot when I stopped to let another car back out of its spot. It was the nicest one in the entire place-- a shiny silver Volvo. I didn’t pay much attention to it until it decided to stop the entire line of traffic by stopping outside the office. I sighed. No one would be able to see the Volvo from behind The Thing, and I’m sure I would be the one people would blame for the traffic jam. I narrowed my eyes and tried to will the stupid Volvo owner to move out of the way. It didn’t work. 

“Come on, come on,” I muttered, looking anxiously in the rearview mirror. No one behind me looked angry yet, which was good. I shot an annoyed glance through my windshield. A group of kids hurried through the rain toward the Volvo. I was surprised to see that it was the Cullens. Emmett, Jasper, and Alice walked towards the car with long, graceful strides. Edward seemed to be the one driving. He hit the gas almost as soon as his siblings got in, and traffic was moving again. The whole thing only took a few seconds, and my fears of a traffic jam were abated. 

What bothered me now was that Rosalie wasn’t anywhere near her family. It was like I had imagined the whole thing in the lunchroom earlier. It was stupid and egotistical to think that she was so angry because of me that she would leave school, but I couldn’t help it. I knew she was there at lunch-time, and then she just… wasn’t. I spent the ride home decompressing from the day. I left the truck running while I rushed inside to grab the food money. A thought struck me when I was counting the bills out. 

I hadn’t thought about Emma all day. Not since I had decided to not reply to her. Normally I found that impossible. She was all I thought about since we broke up. I wasn’t sure if it was the stress of my first day or what, but I had pushed her out of my mind in a way that I hadn’t been able to do for a long time. 

Maybe Forks would be good for me after all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long break between chapters everyone! I've been super busy with work. I'll try to update more often. Shoutout to the anon on tumblr who's been sending me lots of questions about the fic. I wanted to bring up something on here that they asked me about on tumblr. They wanted to know who I see Bella and Rosalie as in my fic besides Nikki Reed and Kristen Stewart. 
> 
> I see Bella as Sophie Cookson- Specifically how Sophie Cookson looked in Netflix's TV show Gypsy. She really nails the whole alternative vibe that I'm trying to create with my version of Bella. So if you want to see how I see Bella in my head, google what she looks like in that show. 
> 
> For Rosalie, I see her as Teresa Palmer. I love Nikki Reed, but I've always seen Rosalie as Teresa Palmer in my head, even back when I first read the series ten years ago. 
> 
> Anyways, I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter, and if so, PLEASE leave a review! Absolutely nothing makes me want to write more than reviews do. 
> 
> See you soon, and come say hi on tumblr. The url is: iloveduinsecret.


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